If you want a fair comparison between Windows, MacOS and Linux then I think its wrong to compare distros that don't come pre-installed when you buy your device.

Not one single MacBook owner had to install their OS and configure drivers etc. None of my family, friends or coworkers had to install Windows on any of their PCs (I know that some people do but not in any of my social circles).

Consider Pop_OS from System76 or Tuxedo OS from Tuxedo Computers, they have identical user experiences as Mac or PC:

Step 1: Buy computer Step 2: Turn on Step 3: Answer some one time setup questions Step 4: Get on with your life

If you have the opportunity to build your own PC and fresh install an OS from scratch then when you come across a problem that you don't have experience with you will be understandably frustrated.

Specifically Windows has the advantage that hardware manufactures always make drivers for Windows. If your hardware is supported then the Linux OS installation is not very different, but when the hardware is not plug-and-play then configuring Linux becomes its own kind of frustration torture.

TL;DR Get your computer with the OS already installed, then Linux is no more frustrating than a Mac or PC. Install Linux yourself and your mileage may vary.

Maybe you would be interested to try linuxfromscratch?

I'm glad that not everyone is oblivious to my suffering! Thanks for the validation!

Before you post a snappy "just do X" or "try this software" try it yourself consent-letter-2123.pdf my complaint is not trivial.

https://travel.gc.ca/docs/child/consent-letter-2123.pdf Open the form and try it yourself. What you are saying doesn't work for this form. You need the scripts embedded in the form to create the final consent letter.

Very disappointed that the Canadian government uses them so much. I'm open to changing my mind if there is an explanation as to why this format is irreplaceable. Like maybe it offers some security feature or the like?

https://travel.gc.ca/docs/child/consent-letter-2123.pdf I was exactly in your position before I had to use this document! I was confident that a government form would not be this complicated but a big part of my frustration was that I was trying to solve the issue as if it was a PDF problem but PDF is an open standard and there are plenty of excellent FOSS tools and programs that can do anything you can imagine with a PDF. This form is an imposter!

Please share that article! 5% feels like just around the corner!

Adobe does sell licences for other companies to use the XFA format but even the software you linked has a free reader that pushes you to the paid full version. Also not FOSS.

Was just trying to watch the original Star Wars from when I was young and found out that it is simply not available for sale. My money is no good! Then I found this Project 4K77.

I guess this is the endgame for tracking every user in the world but they added "universal basic income" in the title so that its not so obvious what they are up to?

I had a similar idea: Could search engines be broken up and distributed instead of being just a couple of monoliths?

Reading the HN thread, the short answer is: NO.

Still, its fun to imagine what it might look like if only......

I think the OP is looking for an answer to the problem of Google having a monopoly that gives them the power to make it impossible to be challenged. The cost to replicate their search service is just so astronomical that its basically impossible to replace them. Would the OP be satisfied if we could make cheaper components that all fit together to make a competing but decentralized search service? Breaking down the technical problems is just the first step, the basic concepts for me are:

Crawling -> Indexing -> Storing/host index -> Ranking

All of them are expensive because the internet is massive! If each of these were isolated but still interoperable then we get some interesting possibilities: Basically you could have many smaller specialized companies that can focus on better ranking algorithms for example.

• What if crawling was done by the owners of each website and then submitted to an index database of their choice? This flips the model around so things like robots.txt might become less relevant. Bad actors and spam however now don't need any SEO tricks to flood a database or mislead as to their actual content, they can just submit whatever they like!. These concerns feed into the next step:

• What if there were standard indexing functions similar to how you have many standard hash functions. How a site is indexed plays an important role in how ranking will work (or not) later. You could have a handful of popular general purpose index algorithms that most sites would produce and then submit (e.g. keywords, images, podcasts, etc.) combined with many more domain specific indexing algorithms (e.g. product listings, travel data, mapping, research). Also if the functions were open standards then it would be possible for a browser to run the index function on the current page and compare the result to the submitted index listing. It could warn users that the page they are viewing is probably either spam or misconfigured in some way to make the index not match what was submitted.

• What if the stored indexes were hosted in a distributed way similar to DNS? Sharing the database would lower individual costs. Companies with bigger budgets could replicate the database to provide their users with a faster service. Companies with fewer resources would be able to use the publicly available indexes yet still be competitive.

• Enabling more competition between different ranking methods will hopefully reduce the effectiveness of SEO gaming (or maybe make it worse as the same content is repackaged for each and every index/rank combination). Ranking could happen locally (although this would probably not be efficient at all but that fact that it might even be possible at all is quite a novel thought)

Sigh enough daydreaming already........

Also to your point about not having an issue with Firefox, I read that Firefox recently implemented an XFA reader in their browser but the issue is that most of the javascript is not supported so the functionality of the form is not guaranteed to work.

I really hope they do but I'm keeping my expectations realistic.

Another vote for Navidrome.

An open alternative to Apple/Google/Samsung pay seems impossible.....

Why is it expected that social media companies will find a solution for this? Political discussions are part of the democratic process so why would any of the big social networks (who are effectively advertising companies) have an incentive to foster the fair and open exchange of ideas and information?

Your average user is comparing the time to setup a new game vs a punch in the face, no contest punch in the face all day! Now if you are getting punched in the face for more than 5 hours then maybe they will start considering an alternative....

I selfhost my own email and you are absolutely correct it is musch easier to receive than to send. I use a 3rd party to send all my outgoing mail on my behalf.

Feels very hostile right? I assume that all these smart XFA forms still have an online legacy dumb equivalent that is far less easy to use (both for the user and the government)

That just shows how dishonest Adobe is being. For example if a form was named "gov-form.xfa" instead of "gov-form.pdf" then my whole expectation would be different as it is obviously not a PDF and so I shouldn't treat it as such.

YunoHost is trying to make it easier than a synology NAS to install services and get them setup properly but I agree that to configure your network properly is difficult and everyone's setup is different so specific knowledge is required.

This and so many others that are irreplaceable because of the Network effect. Google Maps, Uber and so on...

However if you are looking for a self contained app to bring into the Foss ecosystem then I would recommend making a game that you like?

My first game that I bought on Google Play was Osmos making a version of this that is open source would make me happy....

SMS Backup & Restore? Unless there is an alternative that I'm missing? Play store link

I recently made the switch to Vaultwarden when I read a series of articles making predictions about passkeys and how they are lining up to replace passwords. Bitwarden apparently is ready to implement whatever standard becomes most popular and I had FOMO of being left behind if I stuck with keepass only. Previously I was using various keepass compatible apps and then syncing the KDBX database with my Nextcloud. (Vaultwarden is the selfhosted fork of Bitwarden)

Great reply, thank you. OP points out that the situation appears hopeless and I often leave feeling that capitalism has truly captured all the regulators and is now free to grind all value out of society. Assume we get a decent amount of the population on the same page what is the next step? Is there no room for reforms? I have a feeling that only when public discussion consistently prioritizes human well-being above all else can any progress be even attempted.

Where you able to convert the form into an open format and also preserve all the original functionality? If this is true then there is absolutely no excuse for these forms not being offered in alternative formats. There are some tools that will let you 'flatten' an XFA form to a static PDF but this destroys all the dynamic parts of the original.

Gooble-gobble, gooble-gobble!

Unfortunately this is mostly true.......

The actual % numbers are probably not that important. Software developers and hardware manufacturers are looking for a critical mass of users of their product. So if 20% of the world switch from Windows to Linux but they are the 20% that only use a web browser then why would the compatibility landscape change? Adobe are not going to do the hard work to support Linux just because schools and libraries switch to Linux. Even if every government mandates using Linux for government offices would Cricut suddenly support Linux?

I saw this but its missing a key feature: daily backups. SMS Backup & Restore can make a backup every day then I can sync the file out to Nextcloud or similar. It also supports Dropbox if that's your thing.

Thanks will take a look! Sad to hear you eventually gave up but I'm encouraged by the concept. It would make my current setup much simpler and is in keeping with my ethos that I want as much as possible done locally. The VPS should be no more than a piece of networking infrastructure.

Doing pretty much the same thing but using the android app from AuthPass with backup to my Nextcloud. (It uses kdbx to store the passwords)

I am so sorry! I took another look at SMS Import / Export and to my surprise it does support scheduled backups! I had seen it before and had overlooked that feature so disqualified it. I'm going to test it now but if you don't hear back its probably because I made the switch without issue.

I think this is the only feature that matters. For a user switching away from Windows I would love to hear about the user experience between buying a system76 (or another Linux system seller) vs a Mac laptop. Complaining that Linux doesn't work with your hardware is like complaining that the hackintosh that you built doesn't work with your hardware.

spelling

I should have prefaced my situation better: I live in a country where the ISP censors certain websites and online services. The closest Linode is not on my continent (so the latency is noticeable). So my need to be connected to the Wireguard VPN really depends on what I'm doing. Having a split DNS system is seamless and I only activate the VPN manually as needed (both at home and when I'm out) Otherwise I would have just asked my ISP for a static IP, opened some ports and installed tailscale for everything else.

The wealthy actively lobby for tax breaks and relaxed regulation meanwhile the working majority don't seem to be able to stand together and demand social programs or protections from big businesses. The government is not corrupt for delivering the change that is asked if it. Easier said than done but change for the better is possible.

When I read the OP I thought "oh yeah I used to use that all the time, I wonder what its like now?". Seems to have changed a lot......

No matter if it is greed, competitiveness, narcissism, another personality trait or some combination of them the point was that we as a society should not consider becoming a billionaire as model behavior. By all means be the best sports player or musician or top surgeon and make as much money as you are legally allowed. Most tech billionaires are just not that impressive to justify their current net worth.